


but I am home

by The_Resurrection_3D



Category: Eddsworld - All Media Types
Genre: Aftercare, Alternate Universe - Bookstore, Alternate Universe - Little Red Riding Hood Fusion, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Cannibalism, Childhood Sexual Abuse, Childhood Trauma, Established Relationship, Experimental Style, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Antisemitism, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Implied/Referenced Disordered Eating, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Internalized Homophobia, Intrusive Thoughts, Light BDSM, M/M, Master/Pet, POV Alternating, Puppy Play, Rape/Non-con Elements, Red Riding Hood Elements, Subdrop
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-07
Updated: 2020-07-07
Packaged: 2021-03-04 23:28:16
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,219
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25124674
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/The_Resurrection_3D/pseuds/The_Resurrection_3D
Summary: Maybe in this story the wolf doesn't have to die.
Relationships: Patryck/Paul (Eddsworld)
Comments: 7
Kudos: 5
Collections: if your muse hadn't killed herself





	but I am home

**Author's Note:**

> An edited reupload of my old Paultryck Red Riding Hood AU/nonfiction hybrid piece. 
> 
> This is tagged as rape/non-con, but there is **no graphically depicted rape,** neither of adults nor of children. I tagged it this way because the story would not function without its rape themes. There is, however, graphically depicted cannibalism. So tl;dr: the tags ain't a joke.

i.

Paul wakes up to his heartbeat thundering in his ears.

The world is dark, even Patryck’s reading lamp on the nightstand turned off – no moon, no shadows of bony branch fingers along the walls and ceilings. Radio static spread through his chest, the burn of repressed tears all throughout his sinuses. He wakes up with his hands clawing at the soft leather collar around his throat, tinkling the name tag, fumbling for the latch once, twice, three times more than should be necessary.

It’s loose, but the mere weight of it is enough.

He tosses it down, balances himself on his hands – carpet, plush pillow under the rest of him, blanket over top.

“Patryck?” he croaks out, before his brain catches up and he realizes the rough carpet underneath him is not because he’s rolled off the bed again– no, he’d been told to sleep on the floor.

No sound.

“Patryck?” he asks louder, more desperate. His eyes are adjusting enough now to see lighter black shapes around him, enough for him to remember where he is in relation to their bed. “Patryck?”

A shuffling of sheets, a groan. “Wha’? Paul?”

Paul starts to crawl forward, but stops and hisses in pain as soon as he moves his legs – the lightest touch of the soft blanket over the back of his thighs burns like a motherfucker, and Paul’s fingertips find a long list of stripes, like notches along a bedpost.

Vague memories of the nightmare – red on white refracted, purple bruises on brown skin, a violent _mise an abyme._

Paul idles a moment, pressing his nails into the welts before he finally kicks off the blanket and crawls to ~~their~~ Pat’s bed, chewing his cheek as the pain in his legs intensifies.

_You’re such a fucking child._

I fucking bought this bed, I get to sleep in it.

“Paul?” Patryck’s voice, too tired for emotion; Patryck’s hands, cold and calloused along his face, so welcome Paul can’t help but jerk away. “Puppy, what’s wrong?”

“I dunno,” Paul says, cringing at the whine in his voice. The burn behind his eyes turns to needles right through them. “I’m sorry.”

“You’re dropping.” The sleep is gone from Patryck, yet still nothing but that clinical detachment remains. “Here, get under the covers.”

“It still hurts.”

“I’ll put some more salve on it. Come on,” pulling on the covers until Paul lifts up his knees, exposing a bit of himself — naked, like Paul, skin perfect save for the place on his inner thigh where Paul had gotten too impish and bitten him and tasted metal. “Come cuddle up to me.”

Paul bites down on his cheek, tasting his own as he slips into place, pulling Patryck into his arms. Patryck rests his face against Paul’s collarbone, running his fingers along the taut rope of muscle in Paul’s neck—Paul has never liked his face touched when he’s in a state, and even this is almost too much.

Paul bites harder. 

Paul wraps his arms around Pat, tries to swing a leg over, only to find even that stretch reignites an ache deep inside him. Patryck notes his expression and instead slips his knee between Paul’s, scooting closer.

“Do you want to do your routine again?” Patryck asks, voice quiet and deep in his throat. Warm shower and shoulder massage, a candy bar split between the two of them.

Paul’s first instinct is _absolutely,_ but the thought of the water on the back of his thighs—yeah, no thanks. Besides, he doesn’t want to keep Patryck awake any longer than he has to; the thought that Patryck may not remember this if he just can slip back out before he wakes is the only thing making this intrusion tolerable.

He needs to hear Patryck’s voice again, so instead he inhales the familiar black cherry of Patryck’s hair and says nothing at all.

It’s silly to say, but Patryck’s scent has always reminded him of finding a seat in the corner of the library and falling asleep just out of the reach of the sun.

A cleared throat. “Paul?”

“No, ’m okay.”

“Sure?”

To which Paul nods, planting a small kiss on Patryck’s hair. “Just a nightmare.”

Patryck yawns. “You have a lot of those.”

Paul grunts. I know.

Patryck kisses the nape of Paul’s neck, murmuring against the prickly skin. “Did you start seeing Erin like I asked?”

Erin the therapist, to which the answer is that Paul thought long and hard about it and then went out with Tord to drink and watch a football game he doesn’t even recall. “Yeah.”

“Okay. Good.” He lets Paul pull him even closer to his chest, (ignoring) not noticing how Paul’s skin prickles with goosebumps, an itch deep in the bone. “Sleep well, love.”

I could, if I could be sure I wouldn’t dream about raping you.

Everything is fine. The scent of dark cherries is overwhelming, and for once Patryck seems to be running warm against him, his heartbeat slow and even under the hand Paul slips between his shoulder blades.

( _He’s better off without_ -)

Everything is fine, for _fuck’s_ sake. 

"Sorry for waking you up." One part genuine, another sickeningly hoping for Patryck to pull back and coo over him, _no no baby, you don't bother me at all,_ but he wouldn't love Pat so much if that's what he could expect to happen. 

Instead Patryck yanks his pinned arm free, snaking both around Paul’s neck, nuzzling closer to his chest with a mumbling that sounds like either “puppy” or “Paulie.”

Patryck kisses his cheek, just a quick peck. He rests his face hardly a centimeter from Paul's, close enough for Paul to feel his warm breath on his lips. His own eyes are heavy and his body is on a pendulum as he lays here still and watches Pat sleep, but Paul doesn’t mind. 

The next dream is a blissfully boring monochrome. 

  
ii.

In her groundbreaking 1975 book _Against Our Will_ , feminist Susan Brownmiller cites "Little Red Riding Hood" as example of how "rape seeps into our childhood consciousness by imperceptible degrees."

Paul wakes to the smell of eggs and pancakes. He tries to roll onto his back, but the spaces beside him dip, plastic legs caging him in. The clatter of utensils and ceramic, the softer thuds of two glasses of water being placed on the nightstand.

“Sleep better?” Patryck asks absently, sitting down on the edge of the bed. A purple robe drapes open over his frame, his brown hair tied back in a loose, already-spilling ponytail.

Paul carefully pushes himself onto his elbows, Patryck slipping a pillow behind his shoulders. “A little, yeah.” He can’t help but feel a twinge of embarrassment as he takes in his tray: a fluffy spinach omelet and pile of pancakes drowned in syrup and whipped cream and strawberries. “You didn’t have to.”

“You’re right,” Patryck says, taking up Paul’s fork and spearing a strawberry off his plate. “But I wanted to.” He takes his bite, hands the fork back to Paul. “Now eat. Are your legs still hurting?”

He hasn’t tried to move them yet for a reason. “Not really.”

“Not really or no?”

“Not really as in I’m not going to die.” He cuts a thick slice of his omelet, words muffled with his chewing. “Thanks for the breakfast, though.”

“Tord called to say he just needs help moving some stuff out of the old warehouse. Are you gonna open the shop with me?”

Paul chews for too long, dread in his stomach. The next bite scraps against the walls of his throat. “I guess I’ll go ahead and help Tord.”

“Some of the kids are starting to ask what happened to you.”

When Paul sets down his fork and knife he can practically see the sweat glistening on them.

“You know how I am with them,” Patryck says, taking a pointed sip of his water. Paul can’t help but laugh at his face, eyes wide and lips thin like a traumatized muppet. Patryck's flat tone usually deflected any younger customer's interest, but somehow, someway, last week a jelly-stained girl around the age of three had ended up gently interrogating him on his Jewishness, which was all well and good, until Patryck had had to explain where exactly bacon comes from. 

Paul wasn't there, but he knows the story because afterwards he'd been told only half-jokingly to check all the windows for cracks. 

“You broaden their horizons,” Paul says, to which Patryck rolls his eyes:

“One more kid decides to piss themselves in the store and I’m gonna broaden their face with a shovel.”

Paul laughs so hard he nearly chokes on his omelet.

Patryck smiles, leaning forward and brushing some of Paul’s hair behind his cauliflowered ear once he's collapsed back into the pillows. For all the warm food, Patryck’s hand still feels cool against his skin, but Paul simply turns his face into it, beaming back.

Patryck’s smile is gone.

Paul opens his mouth, but Patryck cuts him off: “I remembered something you told me last night,” he begins, “that you started seeing Erin – and right before I feel back asleep, I thought, Hey, wait a minute, you've never told me about any appointments.”

“Because you’re always so busy!” Paul retorts, reaching up toward's Pat's ear, but Patryck catches his wrist before Paul can even ghost a nail through his hair.

Patryck relaxes his grip at Paul’s widening eyes, sighs, puts Paul’s hand down on the bed. Paul tries to speak again, but the words catch in his throat, so Patryck clears his own and continues, “Anyway, I called Erin and she didn’t recognize your name.”

Patryck narrows his eyes. “Not gonna say anything?”

Paul shrugs. “I don’t know what you want me to say.”

Patryck’s shoulders fall, _idiot, idiot, id—_

“Do you want some more of my strawberries?”

Patryck massages his finger-pads into his eyelids –

\- “I’m sorry, okay? I just” –

\- turning to glance at the clock before giving an exhausted sigh.

“It’s too early to fight with you, Paul.”

“Then don’t,” Paul says. “Just sit here and have breakfast with me. Get back in bed; we have an hour before the shop opens.”

Patryck shakes his head, pushing a hand through his bangs, eyes suddenly so dark-rimmed and puffy. "I have to shower and restock the shelves,” _which he could’ve done if he hadn’t made you breakfast,_ “and then make some final arrangements for the Army meeting tonight –”

“I’ll do that. All of it. Just have another strawberry?”

Patryck hasn’t lifted his hand off Paul’s wrist. Now he moves the hand up, intertwining their fingers, lifting them up to gently kiss Paul’s knuckles.

Then he stands and draws his robe tight around himself. “I’m not hungry." Their eyes linger, Patryck's fingers drumming on his arms, Paul swallowing down the urge to say 'Please", when Patryck sighs, shoulders slacking. "You know I love you, right?”

Paul nods _. For now._ “Of course.” 

A curt nod. “Good. Put anything you don’t eat in the fridge." The shower is a bit down the hall, so he turns away, throwing out from the doorway, "And if you get a chance to today, the dishwasher’s broken.”

_"_ _Red Riding Hood,_ " she concludes, "is a parable about rape...Better stick close to the path, better not be adventurous. If you are lucky, a _good friendly_ male may be able to save you from certain disaster."  
  
iii.

After the last scene, Paul fixes the dishwasher while Pat showers, and they pass each other in the hallway, not touching.

Just another normal day.

His legs hurt far less when he walks, now, though the muscles scream when he sits on the edge of the bathtub, still wet with Patryck’s footprint. Oh well, it’s Sunday anyway, so they’ll have the store mostly to themselves until the late afternoon, once everyone has filed out of their post-church feast.

Paul inspects himself in the mirror as the hot steam starts to fill the room. The jiggling thighs and belly that Patryck loves to run his hands over, raising his eyebrows at Paul’s stories of making weight for wrestling – starve for days, binge for days, sometimes so much exercise he’d be left hungry enough to eat up to ten thousand kcals.

Now he and Tord just have Red Army banquets for two.

Thank God Pat lets him keep his accounts separate.

The welts on his thighs have purpled to a violent night sky, except for –

A small butterfly bandage on one of them, higher up his ass. Huh. Patryck must have put that on while he was sleeping. Probably antibacterial cream too, as per usual.

The other day I found in the free book box by the bar a slim blue volume: _The South Atlantic Review,_ volume 63, winter 1998. Probably stolen out from one of my English professors and then discarded. The first essay is on Christopher Marlowe’s – a contemporary of William Shakespeare, for those who don’t know – 1594 historical play, _Edward II._ The new king brings his old lover Gaveston back from his exile in France and shit immediately hits the fan, ending with both of their deaths.

Paul peels the bandage back, pulls apart the edges of the cut, and watches a few droplets of blood appear. It hurts, yeah, and if he didn’t know better he would relent to his instincts and slip his fingers inside, tease it open a little more, if only to prove to himself that it’s not the kind of pain he’s looking for. Besides, he needs this to heal; they have some local hot-shot author coming in tomorrow for a reading. Mics need to be tested, floors sweep, couches drenched in fabric refresher, signed copies counted. We need a good performance to sell it, Tord had told them.

_“By “performance” here,”_ writes William B. Kelly (not to be confused with William B. _Kelley_ , late Chicago lawyer and gay rights activist), _“Deleuze and Guattari refer to the conversion of blockages into lines of flight. For example, spurs might be constructed, linking two previously unconnected roads. This provides a means of traversing previously restricted spaces…”_

It never works, anyway. Rip open cuts, walk on broken feet, claw up his skin until it’s red and the gray collects under his fingernails – it’s never as satisfying as everyone makes it out to be. It feels like a song that’s middling out with no resolution, ending on all the wrong chords.

_“…By “competence,” Deleuze and Guattari allude to existing with the blockages without transforming and eluding them: doing one’s best regardless of how stifling the experience may be.”_

  
iv.

After we've exhausted our complaints about _Frozen_ 1 and 2, the latter of which we've both watched from a Thai camrip trying to sell us some shady gambling site, we discuss Disney's next potential princess. I propose Red Riding Hood, which has retained a steady popularity despite no childhood-defining movie adaptation to its name, and she scrunches her brows. "But she's not a princess."

"Because _Frozen_ follows “The Snow Queen” so closely," I reply.

She shrugs, and then I pull out my notebook with a wicked smile. "Let's guess how Disney would adapt Red Riding Hood."

She tells me nothing I didn't already expect — the Huntsman being the villain a la Hans, Red being a princess on some journey to save her kingdom "or whatever," but when she tells me about the Wolf being some scrawny dork ("Hiccup from _How to Train Your Dragon_ ") with anime emotive dog ears who transforms into a big, burly wolf, that Red and Wolf are forced to go on some quest together and are fucking I cross my legs and beg her to stop, please stop, it's like she's stomping on my dick with spiked boots.

I mean she's right. But oh what spiky boots. 

* * *

"I have a friend," my other roommate said all those months ago, "who gets viscerally uncomfortable whenever twinks hit on him because he feels predatory." 

I can't love women in the right way. All those bits of me are poisonous and foul. 

v.

Snow? 

Yes, white flurries through pitch black trees, needles threading the sky — no sound as he walks through, though he 

(Puppy? You okay?)

There's a wolf and a man in red reading to it. Paul can't hear what he's saying as he walks closer. 

The wolf's stomach is ripped open, shiny gray guts spilled onto the floor. The man in red is sitting right in it, blood soaking through to his underwear, probably right through to his bones, but he doesn't seem to mind as he smooths his hand down (my) the wolf's neck, his fingertips ghosting the surface of the fur, almost not touching (me) him at all. A book with its front cover folded back like the morning paper, voice familiar and 

(a hand on my neck, a protest caught in my throat, Okay, okay, I'll leave it on)

It's Patryck. 

He looks up. "Aren't you cold?" He asks with a smile, rubbing at his arms before tightly pulling the edges of his scarlet cloak over himself. "Brr. Come get me warm." 

"No, I -" Paul rubs at his own elbows and feels scritch-scratchy fur. "What are you reading?" he asks. 

A hand pushes the cloak forward like a hernia, and Paul realizes his and wolf's breathes are moving in time. 

(soft lips on my hair) 

The wolf feebly raises (my) head, revealing another that had been blocked from Paul's view, browner fur, slimmer muzzle - before dropping it back down to earth, too much effort for too little gain. Patryck reads him the cover.

"No," Paul says. “What did you just read to him?"

"Paul, you've got to start cleaning out your ears." A small smile. Then he unfurls himself from his cloak, as though it were never that cold at all, shakes the snow out of his long hair, and reads the passage again. His voice is too loud and all around Paul, surround sound in the lifeless tree.

The words ring through his body like a hollow bell. 

"May I see?" Paul asks. He tugs at his collar, feels more fur under his nails. 

Patryck nods, holding it out at arm's length as I walk forward and —

Paul groans. 

"Have a nice nap?" 

Muffled confusion as Paul raises his head, tries to open his eyes, too bright, shuts them again. His head is in Patryck's lap and Patryck's fingers are on his neck, running down the span of his shoulder and then back up again. Paul wipes at his eyes, sits up slowly, moving out of the blanket Patryck has draped over them.

"Don't run away," Patryck says. "You're the only thing standing between me and hypothermia." 

Another noise. Paul clears his throat, runs his hands over his arms, feeling the cold of his skin — and the regular layer of hair. 

"Do I need to back up or do you not care?"

Paul cocks his head. Patryck taps on his book's orange and blue cover — another book, opening up to reveal its own trapped luminous light. Paul gestures dismissively, tells him to just keep going as he lolls back against the couch, Patryck moving over to cuddle against his side. 

He reads for less than a minute before Paul stops him. "Can I see?" 

"Sure."

Paul reads the paragraph, then reads it again. Words like a hollow bell inside him. 

"You can take it if you want to read it on your own," Patryck says, pulling his feet up underneath him. 

Paul shakes his head and hands the book back. "No, I just thought I wasn't hearing you correctly. You can keep going." 

The passage in question is a small fairy tale from David Shields' memoir _How Literature Saved My Life_ : “Once, a long time, something happened. It's never been the same since. It was Dad's fault. We'll sort of forgive him and we'll sort of not forgive him. What sustains me is the broken music box, which Dad inevitably tries to fix and isn't fixable and is me."

Shields is not a lost Grimm Brother, but if I were to pretend he was he would say: “And they lived happily ever after, alone together in their marriage/death bed, their backs both turned away." 

* * *

_Wolf wolf wolf_ I repeat to myself as I wait for the sign at the crosswalk to turn, and Paul is ripping through their books, clawing out pages as I wrote this I can barely see the words, aside from the occasional flash of lights from a passing car

write, walk, write faster

_wolf wolf wolf_

the wolf stoned the wolf gutted the wolf shot

the wolf drowned the wolf starved the wolf, stones sewn into his belly, laundry lines collapsing under his feet

Our breathing is fast, and for a moment I wish it had the cinematic edge of the cold, but it can't because it's spring. 

I also wish I had a dramatic song playing in my head, but I'm blasting "Womanizer" by Britney Spears. 

I'm panting and pacing and Paul is sucking the blood out of his paper cuts.

"Womanizer" goes off. We're alone in our libraries-cum-living-rooms. Silence. 

We collapse on the floor, our feet crossed underneath us. I lose my pencil, grab a pen off the floor, my handwriting barely legible, Paul ripping _wolf wolf wolf_ up into fourths, eighths, sixteenths

the perfect pity party confetti 

Red stays in his stomach. The wolf slips down the chimney with the slick, disgusting grace of an eel, pours Pat's throat into his own mouth, and then swallows him whole. 

And then he lives happily ever after. 

As Patryck would say, _C'est la vie._

Of course, this is not the ending Paul wants either, even as he writes it down in his best, trembling red penmanship, which is what makes stories true. There should be some catharsis. Isn't that what people have been telling me? 

Maybe Paul isn't thinking big enough. Red does not fall in love with the wolf because he is a monster, except in pornos. It's not the happy ending that accounts for who is doing the dishes tomorrow. 

In the aftermath, an emptiness. Is the scene over? I don't know what to do. Pau(I) feel a tightness lodged in his right side brain, near the very tip top of my skull.

I throw on a robe and go outside to the gate, my jaw shaking so hard as I sing along I can feel it in my chest, my hands shaking so bad it's hard to type

It’s spring what the fuck it's _spring_

I was singing low in my throat like a dying moan, or a growl

I tried to sing along inside but I just started to cry. I'm better now. I'm better out here.

Smarter than I, Paul circumvents this with an entire bottle of cough syrup and a note in the morning to buy a new bottle and then drink just enough so Patryck doesn't even know anything was gone.

He stares violently at the ceiling, _Ren and Stimpy_ a low cacophonous drone in the corner of the room, and waits.

* * *

I have had to take this story apart time and again—first to revise it as I normally would, then again to take out those bits would could endanger my publication in an undergraduate magazine no one will read, and the last time to take out those bits where I am truly honest with you.

I think instead here I’ll remind both you and myself—but mostly myself—that this story is supposed to end happily.

My first semester of college, I wrote a sixteen-page essay—well, really five interlocking essays on cannibalism within _The Hunger Games_ trilogy, with special focus on her proposed double-suicide with Peeta. It's autocannibalism, just trust me. It's also, if you really think about it, eating her dad, too. Just trust me.

> "Katniss wreathing Rue’s body in flowers demonstrated that Rue was more than a tribute; similarly, Katniss’s purposed double-suicide is an attempt to trap and contain her personhood, protecting it from consumption by the Capitol. Cannibalism’s potential to incorporate the other into the self has been realized before both metaphorically and literally, with Freud describing the oral stage of psychosexual development as “cannibalistic,” and Jeffrey Dahmer citing the desire to feel like his victims “were a permanent part of me” as his reason for consuming their flesh."

Coriolanus, the most prominent Shakespearean intertextuality within _The Hunger Games_ : 

> _“There was a time, when all the body’s members_
> 
> _Rebelled against the belly…”_

Michel de Montaigne's "Of Cannibals," from which Shakespeare would draw inspiration for his final play, _The Tempest_ : "After that, they roast him, eat him amongst them, and send some chops to their absent friends. They do not do this, as some think, for nourishment..."

So when Paul dreams tonight of Patryck reaching into his open chest and taking a bite out of his liver, he is not thinking, "Yes, you deserve it; this is what I get," he is thinking, "Yes, keep me forever." 

Which is why he gets an erection when Patryck disconnects the values of his heart and holds it in his hands, tenderly as a baby bird. Blood dripping between his fingers onto the thick canvas he had brought for a picnic blanket. Birds chirp pleasantly, and the air is thick with pollen and dew and the coppery scent of blood. Patryck rolls his eyes when he notices, then laughs, first a soft chuckle and then a deep-belly laugh that shakes him so hard his red hood falls right off his head.

"You're amazing," he says, and takes a bite, rivulets like new varicose veins down his arms, his chin, the slow, gentle movement of his throat as he swallows. A small noise of pleasure, and then he sets the heart down on the china plate in his lap. A sweet smile, wipe his mouth off on a cloth napkin they'd stolen from the restaurant they'd gone to last week. "I love you so much, Paul." Another brief peel of laughter bubbles the blood over his lips again, though he tries to hide it behind his sleeve.

Paul can't tell how ironically he means this, decides for the moment he doesn't care. 

Patryck sets the plate aside on the tarp and leans down, pushing his bangs back behind his ear so adorably as he presses a kiss to Paul's drawn-back, quivering lips and dirty, jagged teeth. 

Paul somehow finds the strength to lift his head and somewhat kiss back, trying to help push his blood back down Patryck's throat. 

vi.

Here’s the scene that came before:

Paul freezes up when he hears the basement door open, the soft leather to his lips.

"Paul," Patryck's voice carries. "Have you seen your collar? I wanna wash it."

"I'll do it," he calls back, not turning around, cringing at each groaning step down the stairs. Every step makes the knot in his stomach grow tighter.

_You're forcing yourself on—_

Before Patryck reaches the last one, Paul clips the collar around his neck.

Patryck gives him a strange look, chuckles that he has the name-tag on upside side as he gently tugs Paul forward, resting their foreheads together.

"Let's just go upstairs and read," Paul blurts out.

"You can read?" Patryck asks with a smirk.

Paul returns the expression. "You read and pet me as I lay in your lap."

"And warm my —"

"No." Too harsh. "I'm not —" _you fuck up._ "I just don't feel well."

I just don't trust myself. It's all an illusion of control and I don't know how to handle myself anymore.

"Oh." Again, that strange expression, before Patryck scratches him behind the ear. "Well, why don't I make you some tea, too?"

Paul nods.

_You're—_

_get over yourself._

Patryck gives a few brief kisses, fingers hooked now around the collar, and Paul's hands overlap his as if he's debating whether to push him away.

Paul pads up the stairs behind him and kisses the insides of Pat's wrists as he ruffles his hair. The thoughts make his touch almost burn, so Paul asks Patryck to read to him, long, complex nothings about the force that makes you look back on your life and realize it was all a novel.

What a world to live in, where this is less conventional than drinking until your liver explodes.

vii.

The basement breathes and clicks, alive with what god knows what — the darkness writhes, in the way that only a child can see. 

A child, and Paul.

He’s never stopped being a child, has he? Too big, too fat, too clumsy — good on an American football field and nowhere else. Good until you hurt someone. 

Hurt someone.

He hears footsteps across the ceiling, and gets up off the mattress, quickly stumbling into his sweatpants. 

Patryck shakes his head and smiles at the sight of Paul on the old stair-stepper, sweating from the splash of his own water bottle, smiling in spite of the dead cockroach he’s currently grinding beneath his bare heel. 

viii.

"What do you mean?" Paul asks Patryck as they walk down dark paths Paul either doesn't recognize or has already forgotten — it doesn't seem like Pat is leading them back to the car, but his hand is warm in Paul's and his anger is wonderfully entertaining. Not the fiery passion of Tord that Paul uses as his workout playlist, but a cool knife's edge, the kind that has the witty come-back Paul himself will only think up hours or days after the fight.

I have to be very careful; I'm hiding inside the bushes behind their little stone bench right now, covered in shadow. The only light comes pooled from street lamps, the night gradually quieting as people go back to their dorms or their cars. The bugs are coming out, and soon the raccoons and cats will, too. I don't want them to hear me, nor do I want my fidgeting to overpower their voices in my recording. I hold the phone closer to the front layer of leaves, the brightness facing me.

Patryck turns around, but I'm just out of his vision. He rolls his shoulders and lets his gaze linger, before turning his attention back to Paul. "I mean if you took away the abuse, the molestation, the disability, what have you, and the work completely loses impact, it was never that well-written to begin with. No offense to anyone, but getting raped by your dad doesn't make you a great writer."

A small part of Paul feels compelled to nod and say _Well yeah, I'm not even literate._

But that's the small part that's paranoid and makes up monsters in the midnight shadows because being persecuted by something makes him feel special.

"And honestly I think it romanticizes abuse and tragedy to a degree, to treat them as inherently deep and more artful than something lighter but actually well-constructed for what it's trying to do."

"That's probably the most jadedly un-jaded I've ever heard you say."

A small smile tugs on Patryck's lips. "I think I haven't been making myself very clear; I know fun exists as an experience you lowly troglodytes have, but I personally do not believe nor partake in it."

* * *

Would you believe I now have friends who joke that they can’t read because they were molested? My power, my influence.

Another running joke, created after I realized how easy it was to bullshit your way into awards by simply exploiting your own trauma, something I did over and over and over again that semester _: Just say rape into the mic and watch the whole crowd go wild._

ix.

Paul isn't responding coherently, just a few thrumming noises deep in his throat as Patryck pets his hair, his shoulders, even his face.

_Are you alright, love?_

A murmur.

_Use your words, puppy._

Paul nestles deeper into the crook of his shoulder.

_Please?_

Paul's grip on him tightens, a lower noise. Patryck takes it as a _Can't._

Patryck tries to unwrap himself, but Paul protests, hugging him close with a sound like _Don't go._

_I won't, puppy. I just wanted to go start your shower. Do you not want it?_

No response.

_Paul? Paul, look at me._

No response but the soft, slow, even breathing on Patryck's neck. Patryck hugs Paul back, runs his fingers gently along the marbles of Paul's spine, following the groove down to the curve and then back up again. Up and down. Back and forth. He waits for Paul to come back to him.

And he says, _I'm sorry, darling._

And he says, _I love you._

And he says, _At least you're not in that fucking basement_ before he finally slips himself out of Paul's grasp, watching coolly as Paul rolls over and grips a pillow instead, disheveled and bruised and gorgeous in his mundanity, and thinks of chaining him there to the bed, just to be sure. 

x.

Fragment 32 - _Poor Paul, a bit player in your own story._

I’ve always thought of Patryck as most like Piers Gaveston, the lover accused of causing the English King Edward II's downfall, who in Christopher Marlowe's play discusses manipulating the king with musicians and androgynous bathing boys to "draw the pliant king which way I please.”

 _It shall suffice me to enjoy your love,_ he says, before the world explodes against them,

_Which whiles I have, I think myself as great_

_As Caesar riding in the Roman street,_

_With captive kings at his triumphant car._

And Paul his ex-boyfriend Spencer Jr., who, in Derek Jarman’s 1991 film adaptation, has no real part beyond being passed from Gaveston’s to the king’s bed. The villain Mortimer strangles him, spits the word _girlboy_ in his face, and that's roughly his relevance to the entire movie. 

xi.

"Good dog..." Sir's voice on all sides of him, like he's dunked his head under the bath. Sir rubs his shoulders, kisses him sweetly, checks the shower temperature with his hand.

(You took so much for me)

(I'm so proud of you)

Lovelies and soft touches, fingertips swirling along his stretch marks, lotion rubbed into his new bruises and welts.

(So wonderful)

Paul can't stop shaking.

"What's wrong, puppy? Do you want me to get you the chair?"

"Don't," he tries to say, but he can't find his words. "Don't bother." All that comes out is a weak noise that makes him want to smash his head into the wall.

Patryck would probably tell him not to be so dramatic.

Sir, instead, nods and when the water is right, directs Paul into a lawn chair in the middle of the shower. The burn of the water threatens to bring him back into his own head, even as it pools in his lap and runs over the fresh lashings

(Please, sir, as he crawls into that familiar lap and)

Sir's hands on his shoulders. Sir's lips on his lips. "Paulie, come back to me," he whispers, and then snort-laughs. "Almost forgot about this."

He starts to unclip the collar.

"Aren't you cold?" Paul finally manages to ask.

Sir shrugs. "I'm used to it."

He takes the collar off, opens the shower door and sets it on the edge of the mat.

"Can I be alone for a minute?" Paul asks.

Patryck's smile falters. "Why?"

"I just..." he waves a hand, before running it over his cheek. "I dunno." Then, before he can choke down his casual cruelty: "I just wanna say I can still shower without my mom doing most of it for me."

"Oh. Are you sure?" Patryck ghosts his knuckles over Paul's knee. "We don't really get any other chances to be romantic anymore."

Paul asks blandly, "And who's fault is that?"

Patryck's smile fades. "It would help a lot if you'd sleep in the same bed as me."

The shower door rattles as he stomps out; the bathroom door he leaves slightly ajar, letting the cold air seep in from their bedroom.

xii.

The paranoia comes and goes and feels like cockroach eggs hatching inside my brain.

And here's Paul, growing more and more paranoid that a completely normal, loving father who frequents their bookstore was touching his kid because it’s easier to try and direct your own self-hatred outward, and because Paul doesn’t know what a healthy father-daughter relationship looks like anyway. Better to be safe than sorry. Better to break down and hold a man hostage while you go through his possessions, his computer, his whole house. All for nothing. 

He comes home, his body sweating and shaking and light like it's trying to come untethered, and hears Patryck tapping at his grandmother's old piano.

Whenever I think of Patryck playing piano, I think of him playing the song “Baby’s Romance” by Chris Garneau. _I know now, I know now, I know now I’m never going to tell on you_ … It's one of my favorite songs.

And here's an excerpt from a memoir I'll never finish: I don't know, and I never want to.

xiii.

#21 - cheating 

"May I kiss you?"

Paul feels his hackles raise as Patryck brushes his hair behind his ear, touch such a ghost it makes every hair on his body stand on end. His smile is joyless, his eyes shiny and faraway. There's some deep sadness swirling underneath those frozen golden lakes, like a glimpse of a sea monster so quick you'd think it a trick of perception.

Paul slips his hand over Pat's, tries to smile back more assuredly than he feels, which is zero. "Of course."

Patryck leans in slowly, his lips hovering a millimeter away from Paul's like he's worried he's going to retract before they finally connect, Paul resting his free hand

"I feel like I'm losing you," Patryck says, voice sounding as those it had to claw its way out of his very throat.

_Because you are._

_Shut the fuck up._

"What?" Paul asks. "You're not, babe. I'm not going anywhere."

_Until you get sick of me._

That sounds a little better, so Paul adds, "I'm not leaving until you finally get sick of me. And I'll probably follow you around for awhile afterwards even if you do. " A forced chuckle. "That sounds creepy, no, wait —"

"Is there someone else?" Patryck asks.

xiii.

Here is my favorite scene from _Edward II_ :

_Why should you love him whom the world hates so?_

In Jarman’s, the kid’s prepubescent son Edward III asks his father this after watching Gaveston be exiled, berated, spite upon by the other nobles, his face twisted tight with anger.

The king looks at the young boy he is holding in his arms, the boy he will never see grow up, and answers, _Because he loves me more than all the world._

Paul is clicking Morse code into his pen. Head in his arm, arm on the bar.

_Would you —_

_Vodka, yes._

Throw it back, ask for another. No fancy drinks for me, just the familiar burn of paint thinner.

He'd said I love you first.

Patryck had suddenly folded over while riding him, breathing hard, before he choked on an anguished sob and rolled off.

_What's wrong?_

No response but the shaking of a head.

_Can I -_

_No._ Voice thick in his throat. Pulled the covers up to his shoulders.

Paul had laid there for a few moments more, tried to touch him with an even louder _NO,_ sighed _I'm sorry_ and got up to throw the condom away.

Said _I love you_ as he laid back in bed; _I'm sorry._

It took Patryck about fifteen minutes to uncurl himself and roll over and say, "I love you too."

Paul chews the cap off the pen. He'd known as soon as he'd said it that is was manipulative, but it wasn't untrue — because that's how it is with him, isn't it? Sincerity and guile, always in lock-step together.

Paul wishes he had his collar on.

xiv.

In case you weren’t around for it, I stole Patryck's last name from a book about people who ruin their own happiness. 

"I just don't want to lose you," Pat says. 

Paul hugs back, feeling Patryck's rabbit heartbeat beneath his skin. 

And Paul says, "I know, babe, I know."

And Paul says, "You're not going to." 

And Paul says, "I don't want to lose you either."

And here are the most horrifying words I've ever read: "I've never done a single thing I've wanted to in my whole life."

xv.

Tord is there to see all of the home invasion, to drive Paul back to Patryck’s apartment in angry silence afterward. 

And he gives Patryck a truth serum. 

Here was my brilliant idea for the climax: Patryck gives Paul the ultimatum to talk, and Paul says he can’t — _you’ll hate me/ I won’t /you will /I can prove it_

Patryck tilts his head back and finishes the glass in a few gulps.

"The first time we held hands, I thought about easy it would be to break your wrist. Every time you touched me, even the first time we had sex, a part of me was waiting for you to attack me. And sometimes I get a sick kick out of imaging your whole family dying in some accident so I'm the only one there to comfort you."

Paul sniffs. "I think about that last one a lot too." A mirthless chuckle. "I wanna be there for you, but you'd never let me. Not, y'know, normally anyway.

"You are there for me," Patryck replies, setting the glass down on the table. "But you're not my therapist, and I'm not yours. I don't want to burden you with shit I know you're not equipped for."

"But I still wanna _know_ ; what's the point of even being together if you still treat me like some meaningless fuck?"

"You're not. You'd think I'd do half of what we do for some one night stand? Absolutely not. It's...." Here Patryck has to look away, a hand over his lips as his face strains, and Paul feels as though his blood is about to burst into flame. "It's safer to be myself when we have sex. Like...if you don't like that part of me, you think it's just a performance of me, and not the real thing. Because sex doesn't matter."

Until it does.

He continues: "It's a thing you do and then wash it off in the shower. But— " Patryck grabs the glass, realizes it's empty and then scrunches his brows - Paul knows Patryck is contemplating asking him to go get some more water, but instead he sets the glass back down. "But that's not true, is it? You can't simply _stop_ being yourself, even when —" He cracks a smile. "Even when your vocabulary is a little reduced."

Paul smiles too. "Are you still talking about yourself, or me?"

xvi.

"Can I touch your face?" To which Paul nods softly, so Patryck cups his face, lifting his head gently. "Paul," he says, golden eyes firm and firey and... "I care about you more than anyone else on this earth."

He blinks again; his eyes are wet.

"And I'm sorry I made you feel like that wasn't true."

Paul hears the crack in Patryck's voice, lifts his hands up to hold Pat's. "Can I kiss you?" he asks.

A light laugh. "Of course."

So it goes. Paul laughs into the kiss, happy laughter, and his fingers slip up as Patryck pulls his out to wrap around Paul's neck, deepening the kiss. "Wait, wait — " Paul pulls away. "Can I put my fingers in ...?"

Patryck nods, rubs Paul's nose against his own. Paul's fingers comb through his hair, front to back, feeling it fluff in his hands, silk and dark cherries and perfect, perfect brown. Patryck giggles, "It tickles," into the kiss, which prompts Paul to ball his hands, pull Patryck closer until their lips are sure to split.

xvii.

That's a good epigraph to use;

_See there's just one story_

_And everyone's the star_

_And it goes like this..._

_No one will ever love you_

_For everything you are_

Or, for brevity's sake:

_Tell me how all this, and love too, will ruin us._

xviii.

I want to ruin the ending; I want Patryck to tell Paul something neither of us believes: that your thoughts are your actions; that these intrusive thoughts reflect something true about you; yes, actually, you _do_ want to fuck _[ ]_ who tried to kill you and whom you’ll never fully forgive. Sexuality is defined by suffering, not by pleasure; it was never meant to be something that could make you happy. 

The story “Catherine the Wise,” from Italo Calvino’s collection _Italian Folktales,_ ends torn: “They lived happily ever after. While here we sit grinding our teeth.”

Whenever the topic of grimdark comes up, a certain quote from Ursula K. Le Guin almost inevitably floats up to the surface — 

> _"The trouble is that we have a bad habit, encouraged by pedants and sophisticates, of considering happiness as something rather stupid. Only pain is intellectual, only evil interesting. This is the treason of the artist: a refusal to admit the banality of evil and the terrible boredom of pain. If you can't lick 'em, join 'em. If it hurts, repeat it."_

— without any acknowledgment that the story it comes from is about a happy, shiny, singing city full of happy, shiny, singing people, who can live in health forever and ever so long as they consign a child to a lifetime of unending torture. Your happiness, directly or indirectly, stands upon the suffering of others. Fuck you, got mine.

It's all rather Sadeian: "to share is to be robbed."

Teeth crack, and you hear the shatter before you taste the blood.

* * *

The only reason I ever set out to expand this story is because I realized how cheap my tragedies are—but hey, tragedy sells. Am I not allowed to romanticize abuse when people are out here writing necrophilia about One Direction? 

In all seriousness, the real reason I write angst over happy endings is twofold: the first is that usually my characters have such complex trauma and mental illness that to authentically end on a happy note would require a whole novel, if not more, which leads to the second: I don't get any personal catharsis out of writing happy endings. Not usually, anyway.

That's why I want to ruin this ending—if I'm not happy, why should anyone else be? Besides, this ending is a cop-out anyway; the first step to change; a glimmer of hope, yes, but not the same as a full recovery ending. But then again, for most of us "full recovery" is a myth—we just have to learn how to _get through_ as best we can. The day after he tried to kill me I sat beside him on the whole six-hour drive back up from Florida. The world felt like it should end, but it didn’t, and it won’t. 

You have to move on because the world will without you.

They lived happily ever after, while we sit here grinding out teeth.

xix.

“That's disgusting." Patryck presses his forehead to Paul's, his voice low and tender and grave. "But you're not."

Paul lets out a sound between a laugh and a heartbroken sob.

But then Patryck tells him it’s okay, and that he knows Paul would never hurt him like that, and that your thoughts mean nothing without action behind them — that it doesn’t matter what he thinks about, as long as he chooses to be a good person, day after day. It can get easier, I’m here for you, I want to help you. It’s okay. 

_Do you still love me?_ Paul asks, fighting the urge to turn away, to bury his face in Patryck’s shoulder and hug him until he hears ribs crack. 

And I unclench my jaw.

Patryck brushes his thumbs over Paul’s cheeks, lifts his head up until their eyes meet. Oak and gold. _Of course._

Patryck brushes away Paul’s tears, asks to kiss him. It’s soft and short, but Paul follows Patryck’s head when he starts to move away, and Patryck’s hands move then to pull him closer. 

Outside the sky bleeds a beautiful crimson; the snow sits untouched on their empty flowerpots. Pitch black trees covered in blinking Christmas lights; their forefront bedecked in blue and white. Inside, the bed is cool, but the TV is mindless and their bodies are worn but warm. 

The rise of fall of Patryck's chest, his rabbit heartbeat. The tangle of their limbs and the soft lips on his bare neck and the blood-colored sheets pulled over their head. Patryck smelling of forests and blood and old books, like he always does. He says if Paul orders Chinese he'll make them both breakfast in bed tomorrow morning. Holds Paul's waist when he half-falls out of bed reaching for the phone. 

A poem rises up in the back of Paul’s mind, one Patryck once read to him by the barrack’s stone fireplace as the winds outside howled for blood: _"I couldn't get the boy to kill me, but I wore his jacket for the longest time."_

Maybe in this story the wolf doesn't have to die. 

**Author's Note:**

> [ Here are the footnotes because long; I didn't cite everything, just stuff that may not be clear in text. ](https://the-resurrection-3d.tumblr.com/post/189465714296/posting-the-footnotes-for-chapter-four-of-but-i)
> 
> Back when I'd first published this, I'd had to take some of it down because I was publishing a poem that contained some lines from the fic. Now that poem's out and I have four other publications forthcoming. I'm still kinda in shock. I'd edited this again because it honestly just feels really shitty to have such personal, triggering details about myself out for an audience that doesn't seem to care. Though to be fair, did anyone ask for this? Did anyone ever want it? I really don't have anyone but myself to blame; I've known for a decade that writing fanfic is just screaming into a void. 
> 
> Oh well. How is everyone else doing? I hope you've all been staying safe, given....all this fuckshit. Any feedback or concrit is appreciated (though keeping in mind it is technically unfinished). [Feel free to bug me over on my tungle.hell.](https://the-resurrection-3d.tumblr.com)


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